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News
12 feb 2005: OneFinger 3.3 released. Major new features and
minor bugfixes. Also, a lot of polish. The screenshots must still be updated.
The complete list of changes will soon appear here.
11 feb 2005: I recently had to slow down development
dramatically. However, there are some important new
features in CVS. But I need to fix a bug before releasing a new
version.
I also added a small section in this page, describing an overlooked
feature of OneFinger: the search box.
17 dec 2004: OneFinger 3.2 released. Major new features and
bugfixes. The list of changes will soon appear here.
5 dec 2004: OneFinger 3.1 released. This is mainly a bug fix
release. Some people were having a crash on startup. Some other people
complained about the panel flashing being too disturbing. Please let
me know if you still have problems.
About the new features: a new action "Open directory in terminal"
was added.
3 Dec 2004: OneFinger 3.0 released. With this release,
OneFinger is a completely new program: it does not require
knowledge of the shell language anymore. Instead, it has two "modes":
MIME mode and CLI mode. CLI mode is like the old OneFinger; MIME mode
is more similar to traditional file-managers (but with the benefits of
the history panel and the program panel).
The whole site has been rewritten for the occasion, starting with
this page. Be my guest! :-)
A more detailed list of changes will soon appear here.
5 nov 2004: OneFinger 2.4 released. This release fixes a major
bug, and introduces a major new feature: OneFinger now knows the
files you opened with any KDE application. This means that the
history panel now also shows files opened outside
OneFinger. For example, if you open a text file in KWrite, with
KWrite's file menu, the file immediately shows in OneFinger's history
panel. And the files in this panel can be completely manipulated, as
if you were looking at them from their own konqueror window.
A more detailed list of changes will soon appear here.
5 nov 2004: OneFinger 2.3.2 released. One major speed-up and
one major new feature. The list of changes will soon appear here.
4 nov 2004: the screenshots page and this page have been
modified to better point out some unique features of OneFinger.
4 nov 2004: OneFinger 2.3.1 released. One minor bugfix: the
listbox items were not highlighted on mouseover when selected. This
could be disturbing.
3 nov 2004: OneFinger 2.3 released. Major new features in this
release. Upgrading is a must. The list of changes will soon appear here.
2 nov 2004: kicker applet 1.2.3. There was a problem with
sourceforge that caused the "kicker applet" package to be unusable
(the configure file was missing). This is true for both version 1.1
and 1.2 of the kicker applet. I have uploaded the applet again now,
and I changed the version number to 1.2.3 to avoid confusions. So,
the current kicker applet 1.2.3 should work.
2 nov 2004: Version 2.2.2 released. Two major bugfixes were
done: drag and drop was not working, and the "close terminated output
windows" button wasn't working either. Sorry for the inconvenience.
1 nov 2004: version 2.2.1 released. Fixed a major bug which
caused OneFinger to crash at startup if you were not using the
"nuvola" icon theme for KDE.
1 nov 2004: version 2.2 released. Major new features and
major bugfixes. The screenshots page has
been updated for the occasion, with new pictures and explanations. The
installation instructions in the download page
have been rewritten too. The updated list of changes will soon appear
here.
30 oct 2004: version 2.1 released. Major new features and minor
bugfixes. The updated list of changes will soon appear here.
28 oct 2004: A new screenshot of the CVS version is
up. OneFinger can now use the KDE icons. The difference is noticeable.
27 oct 2004: version 2.0 released. Major new features and major
bugfixes. The changelog is available here.
24 oct 2004: A new screenshot of the CVS version is up. The
only thing preventing a new release is that the docs aren't
ready. Contributions are welcome.
13 oct 2004: The OneFinger kicker applet is now available in
CVS. The applet integrates OneFinger into KDE; it can replace the kde
taskbar and allows dragging files from external apps to OneFinger. The
applet is meant to be used with the CVS version of OneFinger. See the
"download" section for info how to get the applet.
8 Oct 2004: added screenshot of the upcoming 2.0 version.
25 sep 2004: Version 1.9 released. There are major new
features. Most notable:
- Implemented drag and drop of files to a window. This is
particularly useful because the target window doesn't need to be
visible: it is automatically activated. So you don't need to resize
any window in order to drag.
- The taskbar now doesn't show utility windows (e.g. gimp
non-picture windows, if you set the appropriate setting in gimp).
- In the taskbar, when you activate a window, all utility windows
with the same pid are brought on top. This is especially useful for
gimp.
- The program now scales its widgets according to the current
resolution. This makes it usable in resolutions other than 1024x768.
- It is now possible to sort the open windows by recent usage or
creation date.
24 sep 2004: Version 1.8 released. This release contains major
new features. Briefly: 1. added mime support to better suggest
programs; 2. added a new panel which can act (A) as a taskbar (B)
paste WIds in the command line (this is useful to simulate drag and
drop, thus bypassing the individual programs' file managers).
20 sep 2004: Packages for mandrake cooker 9.1 are now available.
19 Sep 2004: Version 1.1.1 released. There are some major
bugfixes from 1.0, and some new features as well.
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About OneFinger
Welcome to the home page of OneFinger, a file manager and
a general-purpose GUI (graphical user interface) for Linux.
Here are some unique features of OneFinger:
- OneFinger has a dynamic panel which can contain files from
multiple directories. It is called the "history panel". Depending
on the situation, this panel can become:
- a list of recently/frequently visited directories;
- a list of favourite files or directories;
- a list of files (and other options) used with a given
program;
- a list of the documents most recently/frequently used with any
program,
and much more. With the history panel you have the important
things always at hand when you need them. Click here to read more about the benefits of
the history panel.
- OneFinger has a feature called "narrowing", which allows you to
see:
- only those programs that make sense with a given file. This
replaces the context-sensitive menu in traditional file-managers;
- only those files that make sense with a given program.
This feature is unique to OneFinger.
How does OneFinger know these informations? As time passes,
OneFinger learns them by watching the way you work; it can also
use the MIME informations in the system.
- OneFinger collects statistics of your work: it can sort
practically everything by recent usage, frequent usage, name, date and
size. Some examples:
- The files in a directory can be ordered by recent usage. This is
surprisingly useful, because you tend to use only a small fraction of
the files in most directories.
- You can have a list of recently used files, and these files need
not have been opened with OneFinger: OneFinger knows the files you
opened with any KDE application.
- Select a program and you will see a list of recent arguments
passed to it.
- OneFinger has an always visible search box which lets you
quickly narrow the visible files or programs to only those matching a
keyword. This features allows you to
- keep directories with many files, yet instantly shrink
them to show the files you need, and nothing else. This is useful
because, very often, there is no good way to organize your data into
directories. For example, you may think to organize your music by
author, then by opera, then by director. But, this way, it is
difficult to get a list of all the performances made by a given
director. The solution is not to organize your music into subfolders,
and use OneFinger to dynamically locate the items you need.
- search for programs by keywords. For example, type
"networking" and you get a list of programs related to
networking. Type "appearance" and you get a list of all KDE control
center modules dealing with appearance.
Furthemore, you only need to type a search keyword once; later you can
find it in a list of recent keywords.
- OneFinger has a user-friendly approach for dragging files
to another window. Most of the time, the target window (the one you
have to drag to) is hidden. The traditional solution is to drag to the
taskbar, wait a second, and the target window is shown. This is
- Not discoverable;
- Difficult because it is a point-and-wait process, where timing and
dexterity are essential. Furthermore, the area to point is very small.
- Even more difficult if you have taskbar grouping.
OneFinger's solution is discoverable and easy to use: click the
files, click the "drag" action, and OneFinger presents you with a
full-screen list of open windows; then you click the target
window. Then the window is brought on top, and finally you have to
click the exact spot in the target window you want to drag to.
Throughout this process, you never have to hold the mouse button
pressed and never have to click in a small area.
- OneFinger is easy to use: you only work by single-clicking
on buttons, with only the left mouse button.
- OneFinger is completely discoverable: since each
functionality has a button, you cannot fail to discover it, because
you cannot fail to notice a button (whereas you could fail to realize
that you can use the right mouse button on something).
A side-effect is that, when you know the meaning of all the
buttons, you are sure to know everything about OneFinger.
Each button explains its purpose with a tooltip.
- OneFinger is more expressive than traditional
file-managers: it has a "shell mode" that lets you compose
shell commands with the mouse. This lets you compose much more
precise commands, which wouldn't be possible with traditional file
managers. For example, you can invoke
-
scp -r /dat/pub/web-site seguso@shell.sf.net/htdocs
-
chmod -r g+a *
- mplayer -vo sdl -subfont arial.ttf -sub file.srt movie.avi
, all without typing anything (neither the program name, nor
the options, nor any filename or other argument).
Why not using the terminal instead? While at first it may seem
inappropriate to use the mouse to compose textual commands,
OneFinger's "shell mode" increases your productivity over textual
shells, for the following reasons:
Other than using the mouse, OneFinger allows you to type any piece
of the command by hand---although in practice you will only do this
when typing a program name for the first time.
OneFinger bridges the gap between CLI and graphical interfaces by
giving you the best of both worlds: you can have total control
over your system, without renouncing to the comfort of a
point-and-click interface.
Miscellaneous informations
OneFinger is created by Maurizio Colucci (email: seguso.forever@tin.it).
OneFinger is free software, licensed under the GPL.
OneFinger works under GNU/Linux.
OneFinger is the evolution of the program Logical Desktop, by
the same author.
OneFinger is written entirely as a python script, so it is very
easy to run.
OneFinger is dedicated to Richard Wagner, the greatest artist
of all times.
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